Blonde Girls and White Paper Packages
by Kaynara
Summary: Jessica meets a stranger on the last day of her life.


Title: Blonde Girls and White Paper Packages

Author: Kaynara

Characters: Jess, YED; mentions of Sam and Dean

Spoilers: Pilot and Salvation

Rating: PG

She's drying her hair when she hears the knock—two short raps. She throws back her head, and her hair—longer than she likes but the length makes Sam smile—dances wetly down the back of her T-shirt. Jess hasn't met a man who didn't prefer her with long hair, and Sam is no different, except for the part where he's completely so. Brilliant, sweet, funny, hurt-deep-down-in-his-soul, would-love-her-bald Sam Winchester, like the gun.

She drops her brush and goes to answer the door. For a moment she hopes it's him, back from wherever the mysterious brother, Dean dragged him off to. She can see Sam standing on the doorstep, sheepish expression on his face at having forgotten to take a key. Stupid to miss him so much when it's been two days tops. She's smiling when she opens the door, imagining how he'll lift her in one of his off-the-floor hugs, and the smile fades for a moment when she sees a stranger in his place.

He's so perfectly average that, were she to try, she would have trouble describing him. He's about medium height, neither slight nor bulky. His hair, not brown or blond but some amalgamation, grows in a way that's neither thick nor thinning. Later, when she's alone, she won't be able to recall whether he wore jeans or khakis, and if his button-down was blue or pale green.

"Jessica Moore?" he says, and his voice matches his appearance—neither low nor high, totally nondescript.

"Yes," she says, and the man holds out a package.

"For you. It was left on my doorstep."

It's lighter than she expects, and soft, its insides swathed in bubble wrap. She holds it to her chest.

"Postman must have gotten mixed up," the man says into the silence.

"Oh," Jess says, and then remembers things like manners. "I mean, thanks a lot for bringing it by." She glances down at the package, which is covered in crisp white paper. There's no return address in the upper-left corner, and the typed letters of her name and address offer no clue at a sender.

"My pleasure," the man says and turns to go.

Jess starts to shut the door, curiosity impelling her to take the package inside and get it open. She loves gifts, surprise ones best of all. In her haste, she almost misses the softly spoken, "A minute?"

Jess opens the door wider, leaning into the frame.

"Jessica Moore … now, you wouldn't be Sam's Jessica, would you? Sam Winchester?"

Jessica blinks at his smile, which is both surprised and pleased. "You know Sam?"

"Sammy—uh, Sam was one of my most promising students."

"That sounds like him," she agrees with a laugh. "You work at Stanford?"

He smiles an acknowledgment.

"I just moved to the building," he says, gesturing. "Sam and I ran into each other recently, got reacquainted. He told me about law school, and of course, you. He just couldn't shut up about Jessica."

Jess relaxes, unable to keep from grinning at that. At first she garnered a weird vibe from this guy, but Sam obviously knows him, and likes him, and Jess has learned to trust Sam's opinions about people.

The man gestures to the package she's still clutching against her midsection. "Took me a minute to put together you must be that Jessica. Sam's Jessica."

"Well, I don't belong to him, exactly," Jess objects, laughing. "But I guess I'm pretty crazy about Sam."

He smiles up at her, and it's genuine, the kind that reaches his eyes, but for some reason she doesn't like it. She feels hot, suddenly, burning in her clothes. She tugs her T-shirt away from her chest, trying to fan herself. Is it too late for an Indian summer?

For a long moment, neither of them says anything. The man darts his tongue out to chase chapped lips.

"Well, it was nice meeting you," Jess says after another long silence. She starts to nudge the door shut once again. "Hey, welcome to the building!"

"Jessica?"

She hesitates, fingers frozen on the doorknob.

"Can I trouble you for a favor? This is gonna sound pretty stupid, but my phone isn't working. You know how it is, they swear they'll be there by noon …"

He pushes back on his heels, rocking to and fro.

Jess chews on her lower lip, thinking. She tells herself she's being ridiculous, that she's too used to having Sam around—her six foot five safety blanket. She was never that girl, fearful of things, and she doesn't intend to be that girl now.

"Of course." She shakes her head at her own silliness. "Of course, come in."

---

Inside, she motions to the couch, mostly clean save a couple of Sam's sweaters, a stuffed dog he brought her for no reason in particular.

"Have a seat. Can I get you a soda or something?"

"Just the telephone, if it's not too much trouble."

She leaves him and goes into the kitchen to hunt down the phone, finds it finally buried under a stack of newspaper. When she turns to go back to the living room, he's standing in the doorway.

"Oh," she says but manages to keep from jumping. She presses a hand to her heart, forces a light-sounding chuckle.

"You startled me!"

He presses away from the doorway, crosses the kitchen to stand before the fridge. After a moment, he takes down one of the pictures, a four by six of her and Sam snapped at somebody's birthday party—funny, she can't recall who's just now. She's smiling, and Sam looks serious, but it's a good photo regardless.

"You make a smart couple," he says.

"There you go." She presses the portable phone into his hand, retracting her own quickly. She berates herself for being so anxious, so lame. She goes to the fridge to get a soda, hoping the caffeine will calm her nerves.

"Sure you don't want something cold to drink?" She's hot again, fire burning in her veins. She chugs a long drink of Diet Dr. Pepper.

"You're a doll," he says. "But then Sammy says as much."

He replaces the picture on the fridge, securing it with a magnet, and then turns to smile at her. Intrigued despite herself, she takes a seat at the kitchen table, curling one leg under her.

"You keep calling him that. Sammy."

"Do I?"

"Yep," she confirms. With her fingernail, she traces the pattern in the tablecloth.

"Well, that's easy." He pulls out the chair beside hers and perches on the edge, hands resting on spread knees. "Sammy's what his family called him. His dad and brother."

Jess forgets to be creeped out for a moment. She's suddenly, painfully jealous of this man in whom Sam obviously confided things. Secrets he kept from her, his girlfriend, lover, roommate and best friend.

"You've met them?" She hears the rise in her voice, an almost squeal. "D-dean and their dad?"

"We haven't been formally introduced. Sam's somewhat estranged from the fam."

"Yeah," Jess says, swallowing. Her heart is beating faster beneath her t-shirt. She can taste the layer of guilt coating her throat, can't quite escape the feeling she's trespassing on something deeply personal.

"But of course you knew about all that," he says, brushing off his hands on his pants. "Poor Sam. He didn't have an easy time growing up. Father dragging him all over God's creation. And that Dean, a real mess from what I hear."

"He shared a lot of his history with you," Jess bursts out. She's ashamed of herself for prying, feels her face glow red with it. She can't seem to stop.

"Oh it was mutual." He smiles. "I shared a thing or two with Sam as well."

She doesn't know what prompts her to say it. She thinks it has something to do with the Sam she met two nights ago, the Sam he became, transformed into, for his brother. For Dean.

"He can be really … tough … sometimes," Jess says slowly. "I love him, God, I love him so much, but sometimes …" She trails off. "Sometimes it's hard."

Sometimes Sam makes her forget about things she wants to remember. Like how, growing up, she wanted more than anything to be a nurse, and lately she wants a lot more to be with Sam. Not that he'd ever stop her from doing anything she wanted, but it's easy to forget those goals in light of newer ones. Like, how she maybe wants to cure him of that thing eating him up inside, sure as cancer, but faster. He thinks she doesn't know about the dreams, or rather that she thinks they're just run-of-the-mill nightmares. But she knows he has them a lot, almost every night lately, and that sometimes, during the worst ones, he cries out in his sleep. Things like:

"Jess!" and "No!" and, once, "I'm sorry I didn't save you."

Sometimes she thinks about what her life might have been if she'd never met Sam. Most days she can picture the alternative—spending time with her friends and studying hard, maybe thinking of med school, like her dad always wanted. Sometimes she pictures this Alternate Universe Jessica in the middle of the night, and it always makes her shiver and roll into Sam's warmth. He always senses her there, draws her right up tight into the curve of his body. But lately, these past few weeks, all she sees of her life sans Sam is darkness.

She comes back to herself, feeling the heat of the room, the damp of the Dr. Pepper sweating against her palm. The man's watching her, his gaze heavy, and she feels herself flush again. Embarrassed she takes another drag of soda.

"Don't give up on Sammy." Reaching out, he settles a strand of damp blond hair behind her ear. She freezes, unable to move to push him away. She knows it's a trick of the light, but for a moment his eyes seem to glow gold.

"Okay," she promises, and then his hand retracts. The spell or whatever it was that made her go stiff and still breaks; she can breathe again, and she drags in a long, sweet gulp of air.

"Kid's crazy about you," the man says slowly. An almost drawl. "I'm sure of it."

"I know he is," she says, because that part has always been easy. And she doesn't know what makes her say the next part, except that he really does seem to know Sam intimately. "Wanna hear a secret?"

"I'd like that."

"He bought a ring. I was doing laundry and I found it tucked in his sock drawer. I'm pretending I don't know," she adds with a good-natured eye roll.

"You know something?" he says after a moment.

"Nope," she says. "What?"

"I see you and Sam living a long, happy life together."

Before she can respond he's rising, pushing back his chair.

"Well, I've taken up enough of your evening, Jessica."

"But—your phone call?"

He turns in the doorway, shakes his head slowly. "It's the damndest thing, but I seem to have forgotten the number."

It's only after he's gone, the door deadbolted and she doesn't even scold herself for drawing the chain, too, that she realizes she never got his name.

---

An hour passes. Jess eats cereal for dinner and doesn't call Sam to check in, see how things are going with his brother. She wonders if Dean really is a mess, like the man said. Jess is good at reading people, but she hadn't gotten any read on Dean during their brief meeting. She's going to make an effort with Sam, encourage him to talk about his family more. Those long years moving from city to city. She pictures Thanksgiving dinner, her and the three Winchester men seated around a table, and snorts at the image it produces. One thing's for sure—Sam will have to do the cooking. Jess makes cookies and that's it. It's only after dinner, when she's curled up on the couch, studying for her bio exam Monday, that she remembers the package waiting for her.

It's just where she left it, tossed atop the little Ikea table where they keep mail. She doesn't need scissors to get it open; the tape is barely fastened, the double sticky parts slapped together like an afterthought. She slits the paper open with one fingernail and draws out the contents.

It's a nightgown, crisp white and soft as silk in her hands. It's from Sam, of course. Who else would mail her lingerie? It's not exactly her taste, not really his either: low and lacy in the front, fussier than she usually wears. Sam likes her best in one of his T-shirts, the long hem dropping all the way to her knees. Jess likes to sleep in gym shorts, worn thin from a hundred washes. But the nightgown is beautiful in it's own way, the stark white achieving a sort of innocence in spite of the sexy neck, the skinny little straps at either shoulder. She strips off her own PJs and draws the nightgown over her head.

Dressed, she goes to the closet and opens the door so she can see herself in the full mirror. She lets out a low whistle at her reflection.

"Wow," she says softly, smiling at the girl who looks back. She tells herself Sam will just drop dead when he sees her in this. Or, more likely, he'll pick her up in a Sam-hug and carry her to bed. They'll get under the covers, curl together and make love slowly, like they only do some of the time, when one or the other needs it.

Jessica yawns and shuts the door to the closet. She's tired and too hot, and decides to give up early on bio. It's oddly warm tonight, uncommonly so for the second of November. Sam's nightgown feels cool and clean next to her skin. She's going to wear it to bed tonight, a surprise for him in case he comes back early.

Making one last pass through the kitchen, she arranges some cookies on a plate, leaves them out with a note on top. Cheesy, but she really does love the big geek.

She is about to get in bed when she hears something outside the window. It sounds like fingers.


End file.
